This post is part of a series beginning with Tales of a Sabbatical: On Becoming a Student of Drawing, Part 1. For February and March 2026, I was a student in CDSR 100 Introduction to Drawing (Continuing Studies) at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Throughout, I kept and analyzed a journal, in preparation for a Scholarly Personal Narrative (Ng & Carney, 2017) paper. The question guiding my research is: What are my lived experiences of being a student in a new (to me) discipline? What follows is part of my preparation, a narrative portrait (Rodríguez-Dorans & Jacobs, 2020) with reflection in the style of Brookfield (2017, Chapter 9).
I don’t like what I don’t practice… so I don’t see improvement so I don’t like it…
After class #3, I wrote: “Today I arrived in class a bit distracted (Olympic hockey!) which was probably a good thing (get out of my head). Class was highly structured, with a model, and [the Instructor] walked around commenting, praising, suggesting, and checking we were using a variety of media. It was, at moments, personalized, in ways familiar and new to me. After break, she came around to me while I was trying India Ink — which I was convinced I hated and wasn’t working. She asked me why and it was hard to put into words, but the shapes and lines I was making felt heavy, clunky, not right, “meaningless” I said eventually. She brought me up to her desk and showed me a specific technique – set of them really, varying ink saturation and brushwork. I noticed how she was holding her brush. First heavy for a light wash, then very delicate by the end for a more concentrated line of contour, then in-between for shading. I mentioned how she was holding her brush (by the end of it, like making a beak shape with her fingers) and she’d been surprised at the reminder — she’d forgotten (in her expertise) to articulate and draw attention to the position of the brush, the ink saturation… she called the class’s attention to the brush noting what she’d forgotten to mention. Those three small techniques helped me hate India ink a little less.”
A week later, after Class #4, I added, “I still don’t like India Ink and am losing interest in it…. I’m not sure why I say I “don’t like it.” Maybe because it just feels hard? Maybe because I have to do a few pages that look [poorly] to get one… that doesn’t look, at a glance, terrible? I enjoy the mediums (like charcoal) where I feel like I’m seeing progress more quickly. I am ready to abandon the medium (Ink) where I see progress more slowly, it feels hard, I have a lot of failures before a little hint of partial success, and because of all that (and it’s messy — potentially disastrously messy) I’m not practicing it at home. Like at all. So YES the mediums that I practice using on most days are probably objectively easier, but they’re also getting practice. I am experiencing the motivational impact of trying something hard and not seeing success soon enough to sustain me. Students!”
| Impact on my understanding of teaching and learning. This story of my reactions to India ink highlights, again, the emotions that are part of the learning process, particularly through challenges. This story also shows how sneaky the curse of knowledge is, and yet how vital it is that we seek to root it out through conversation with our students. While I was watching my Instructor’s thoughtful, personalized demonstration, I remember searching her movements for unarticulated secrets. I appreciated her deep expertise, so much so that I expected it may be getting in the way of our successful learning exchange in that moment. I think I give my students chances to catch me in such forgetting, but this is a clear reminder of how important it is to seek these opportunities and graciously embrace them (as my instructor did, who thanked me before announcing).
The continuation of my commentary about India Ink into Week 4 helps me recognize the looping links among emotion, motivation, practice, and perceived progress. From my experience, I am seeing that lacking perceived progress fuels negative emotions toward the target, decreasing motivation to practice, which decreases practice time, which slows progress further. I wonder if there is a learning theory that captures this process. Probably. |
| Meaning for my Practice. As I knew from the beginning, I see anew the importance of leaving myself notes of what I might be tempted to gloss over in my expertise, and keeping closely in dialogue with students about what and how they are practicing, what they are (and aren’t) noticing about my demonstrations. I could even ask “what steps do you think I took to do that?” which might reveal where my blind spots are, and/or bring along students who didn’t catch a nuance I meant to convey.
Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, I am also reminded of the importance of building opportunities early and regularly for students to build and name their competence, to build positive emotions (and stave off negative ones) and motivate practice. I can think of some ways I do this in my courses, including explicit statements like “remember how hard that was when I first gave you a problem like that” – which always gets at least some nods. How do I build patience and resilience among my students, to make it through the challenges? That still seems to be a key. |